This school year, the administration decided to replace last year’s flip-flop bathroom passes in favor of laminated paper passes. Each laminated pass shows its room number, teacher and department, unlike last year’s flip-flop passes, which had only room numbers on them.

While these new passes may be better (or may not), our question is this: Why have passes of any kind? Our suggestion is that the school should use lanyards, which are more effective, visible and sanitary. Implementing wearable passes would ensure that they are not left in unsanitary areas. Eventually, the school should also switch to a more organized and consistent online bathroom record system.

Last year’s bathroom policy proved unsuccessful because students could easily leave passes lying around school. Many teachers lost their passes just a few months into the school year. The new passes arguably increase the prevalence of this problem as they are thin and easy to slip into a locker or under a trash can.

The school also has not installed holders for the new passes in all bathrooms yet. As a result, the passes are left lying around randomly in the bathrooms, which is extremely unsanitary.

For maximum efficiency, the school should move toward eventually using an online bathroom check in and check out system. Similar to the system being considered for tutorial sign-ins, students should be able to sign in and out of class using their student IDs for simplicity. This information could then be be available to campus supervisors and administrators so that they know who is properly excused from class.

Another option would be to combine the lanyard system with the online system. The lanyard will allow teachers to quickly identify if a student has been given permission to be walking around the campus. The online system will allow more details to be provided such as why the student is leaving which can then be accessed by all school officials.

Although it might take longer for teachers or administrators to check information about a student through an online system, it will save the school money and time since they will not have to keep printing new passes for classrooms that lose them and they will not have to keep changing their bathroom system each year.